New research reveals that Americans want digital services and online payments from their Parks & Recreation departments

First-ever report of its kind from Paysafe and Amilia highlights opportunities to include Parks & Recreation into smart city programs

Over half of Americans (57 percent) would use their local parks and recreational facilities more if an online registration system was offered in their community, according to the first-ever report on residents’ needs for digital access to Parks & Recreation (P&R) services. The new report was jointly published by Paysafe, a leading global payments provider, and Amilia, a cutting-edge recreation management software platform.

As smart city strategies gain momentum across North America, to date many initiatives have largely focused on optimizing city operations and infrastructure, with a more limited focus on changing the ways residents experience their local P&R services. Data from this report, however, which was conducted by The Nielsen Company and commissioned by Paysafe and Amilia, reveals that residents are ready for a digital shift in their local P&R departments, with more than half of American respondents (57 percent) likely to book P&R services over the internet if the proposed service was available, and 14 percent stating that the lack of payment options is a barrier of the current P&R registration process.

“From online to mobile payments and digital wallets, consumers now expect the same diversity of choice with their local P&R department as they experience when shopping online for other services,” said Carla Erlick, Senior Vice President Business Development and Sales, Paysafe. “By making the shift towards digital accessibility and payments, P&R departments can drive better citizen engagement and increase the usage of their parks and recreational facilities.”

In addition to listing the lack of online payments as a top pain point, American respondents revealed a variety of other factors preventing them from accessing and using their local P&R services, including inconvenient registration hours (16 percent), activities that are at capacity too quickly (17 percent) and the lack of registration reminders (17 percent).

“As residents’ everyday lives become increasingly digitized, the way cities and municipalities engage with their communities is set to change. The availability of digital access to Parks & Recreation services is clearly important to American residents, 62 percent of whom consider P&R as an important factor when deciding where to live,” explained Alexandre Gauthier, Chief Marketing Officer, Amilia. “By providing an online platform to Parks & Recreation departments, we offer cities a way to better engage their citizens and drive local economic growth.”

This research is an independent project commissioned by Paysafe and Amilia, and carried out in September 2017 by The Nielsen Company, an independent and world leading authority in consumer insight. The research was completed by surveying over 3,000 residents aged 18+ in select provinces across Canada, and select states in the U.S. Residents were asked about their Parks & Recreation habits, the barriers to using Parks & Recreation services and how a digital platform would impact their Parks & Recreation engagement and usage.

Paysafe is a leading global provider of end-to-end payment solutions. Our core purpose is to enable businesses and consumers to connect and transact seamlessly through our industry-leading capabilities in payment processing, digital wallets and online cash solutions. Delivered through an integrated platform, our solutions are geared towards mobile-initiated transactions, real-time analytics and the convergence between bricks-and-mortar and online payments. With over 20 years of online payment experience, a combined transactional volume of US$48 billion in 2016 and over 2,300 staff located in 12 global locations, Paysafe connects businesses and consumers across 200 payment types in over 40 currencies around the world. Paysafe Group plc shares trade on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol (PAYS.L). For more information, visit: www.paysafe.com | Follow Paysafe on Twitter / LinkedIn / Google + / stories.paysafe.com

Amilia is a Canadian company that offers a state-of-the-art Recreation Management and Registration Software that integrates with the Smart City ecosystem. Our core purpose is to empower local communities to unleash their potential through e‑commerce. More than 450,000 people in Canada and the United States, and over 600 organizations, use Amilia’s SaaS solution to keep track of all their operations in one place. For more information, please visit: www.amilia.com | Follow Amilia on Twitter / LinkedIn / Google +

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